1. Field
The following description relates to a method and an apparatus of modifying a contour line of an object in an image.
2. Description of Related Art
In the field of diagnostic medicine, diagnostic imaging technologies that use radioactive or ultrasonic waves to detect lesions are currently under development to achieve early detections of medical conditions within the human body. An image for diagnosis, or a diagnostic image, generated by such a diagnostic imaging technology may include a portion that corresponds to a suspected lesion. However, the portion of the image corresponding to the lesion may overlap with various anatomical structures of the human body. Thus, it is important to accurately separate a boundary of the lesion from the entire image for an accurate diagnosis. In other words, it is important to distinguish a contour line or a boundary of the object that corresponds to the lesion within the image.
A Computer-Aided Diagnosis (CAD) apparatus is a diagnosis support apparatus used to process a diagnostic image and to determine lesions of interest in the diagnostic image. The lesion determined by the CAD apparatus may correspond to an object simply extracted by image processing, and the ultimate determination of whether the lesion is malignant or benign may need to be performed by a user, such as a physician or a radiologist. Therefore, it is necessary to provide an interface that enables the user to generate and/or modify the contour line of the lesion that is determined in the CAD apparatus.